Haiti said its system of agriculture has been destroyed by the last 4 tropical storms, Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike. The storms killed 425 people in less than a month. On Oct 3 authorities said the official death toll from four storms that ravaged Haiti this summer nearly doubled to 793 people.
Links: Haiti, Agriculture, Hurricane

2008 Sep 30

In Mexico Ramiro Guillen Tapia (65), leader of a farmers' group seeking government mediation in a dispute over 620 acres (250 hectares) of land in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, set himself on fire. Tapia died the next day with third-degree burns over 70 percent of his body.
Links: Mexico, Fire, Agriculture

2008 Sep 30

A new US law took effect as part of the 2008 Farm Bill requiring food retailers to label or display the country of origin for meat, produce and certain kinds of nuts.
Links: USA, Food, Agriculture

2008 Oct 10

Heinz Imhof, known as the Father of Syngenta, died, He orchestrated the 2000 merger of the crop-protection and seeds divisions of Switzerland’s Novartis AG and Anglo-Swedish Astra-Zeneca PLC, creating Sygenta, the biggest agrichemical business in the world.
Links: Switzerland, Agriculture

2008 Oct 19

China's communist leaders announced the approval of key rural reform that for the first time will permit farmers to lease or transfer their land in a change aimed at raising rural incomes and speeding migration from the farm to the cities. The policy change was approved a week ago at a high-level meeting.
Links: China, Agriculture, Real Estate

Zimbabwe’s state media said the government will prosecute 140 white landowners on charges of failing to vacate their farms under the country's controversial 2000 land reform program.
Links: Zimbabwe, Agriculture, Real Estate

2008

Paul Polak, founder of International Development Enterprises (IDE) authored “Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail.” The former Denver-based psychologist cashed out his business in 1981 and soon developed an irrigation treadle pump for poor farmers.
Links: USA, Colorado, Psychology, Books, Agriculture, Inventor

Saudi Arabia abandoned its self-sufficiency agricultural program when it discovered that farmers were burning through water coming from a non-replenishable aquifer.
Links: Saudi Arabia, Agriculture

2008

Libya, under the leadership of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, signed a 50-year, renewable lease for 100,000 hectares of agricultural land with Mali's government. The land in the Malibya project was provided rent free, with water rights included, on the condition that Libya build canals and roads to cultivate rice and cattle there. Some 60,000 small farmers residing within the area were left without water rights.
Links: Mali, Libya, Agriculture

2009 Jan 9

Kenya’s government said 10 million people risked going hungry after harvests failed following a drought.
Links: Kenya, Drought, Agriculture

2009 Jan 25

Liberia’s Ministry of Agriculture said it has set up a command post and called on international experts to help fight an invasion by millions of crop-devouring caterpillars that are eating their way across the country with dire economic consequences.
Links: Liberia, Insects, Agriculture

2009 Jan 28

A new UN report said Myanmar faced food shortages in many parts of the country, largely because of last year's cyclone and a rat infestation that destroyed crops. A human rights group said the Chin people, Christians living in the remote mountains of northwestern Myanmar, are subject to forced labor, torture, extrajudicial killings and religious persecution by the country's military regime.
Links: UN, Myanmar, Agriculture

In Greece riot police fired tear gas at farmers to prevent them from driving their tractors to Athens as part of a protest demanding government financial help.
Links: Greece, Agriculture

2009 Feb 5

China declared an emergency in eight provinces suffering a serious drought that has left nearly 4 million people without proper drinking water and is threatening millions of acres of crops. The government published a plan for the relocation and urbanization of farmers living near the Three Gorges Reservoir. Some 1.4 million farmers would have to move again.
Links: China, Drought, Agriculture

2009 Feb 10

The Utah state Department of Agriculture said Africanized honey bees have been found for the first time in the Beehive State. The bees, long the subject of lore as "killer bees," were recently discovered in Utah's Washington and Kane counties.
Links: Utah, Insects, Agriculture

Scientists published a study showing that genetically modified material did contaminate native corn in the crop's birthplace in southern Mexico. Elena Alvarez Buylla, author of the article published in the February edition of Molecular Ecology, said the difficult atmosphere surrounding the original debate persists.
Links: Mexico, DNA, BioTech, Agriculture, GMO

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2009 Mar 6

Mexico published a new law allowing the planting of genetically modified corn for experimental reasons.
Links: Mexico, Food, Agriculture, GMO

2009 Mar 12

Liberia’s agriculture ministry said the country has been hit by a 2nd invasion of crop-destroying caterpillars. Over a hundred villages have so far been affected by the plague.
Links: Liberia, Insects, Agriculture

2009 Mar 27

Zimbabwe PM Morgan Tsvangirai decried a fresh wave of farm invasions across the country and warned that those responsible for the farm disruptions risk arrest.
Links: Zimbabwe, Agriculture

2009 Apr 9

In South Africa an armed mob invaded a major land reform project in the eastern Mpumalanga province. The invaders were unhappy with the progress of the project, despite warnings that it would take up to three years before a return from what had been badly neglected farms.
Links: South Africa, Mad Crowd, Agriculture

2009 May 4

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded eighty one $100,000 grants in a bid to support innovative, unconventional global health research. The foundation also announced plans to spend $73 million over the next five years to help small farmers in impoverished countries.
Links: USA, Donation, Agriculture

It was reported that Saudi Arabian investors were spending $100 million to raise wheat, barley and rise on land leased from the government of Ethiopia. The World Food Program estimated that it would spend almost the same amount between 2007 and 2011 to provide 230,000 tons of food aid to some 4.6 million Ethiopians threatened by hunger and malnutrition.
Links: Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Agriculture

2009 Jun 7

In Indonesia 19 leading agricultural exporting nations, including Australia, Brazil and South Africa, kicked off talks in Bali aimed at pushing forward troubled world trade negotiations. The Cairns Group of nations accounted for more than 25% of the world's agricultural exports was also expected to take aim at US and European dairy export subsidies.
Links: Indonesia, Agriculture

2009 Jun 8

In Malawi an international organization began moving more than 60 elephants from Phirilongwe village, south of Lake Malawi, to the Majete Wildlife Reserve. Local farmers had used violence to protect their crops from raids by the elephants, and at least 10 people and a number of elephants have recently died in such confrontations.
Links: Malawi, Animal, Agriculture

2009 Jul 10

In Italy the 3-day G8 summit came to close. World leaders launched a $15 billion initiative to help farmers in poor countries boost production in a shift in the way the West tackles world hunger.
Links: Italy, Agriculture

2009 Jul 10

Zimbabwe's army and police refused to vacate diamond fields where security forces are accused of human rights abuses, despite a pledge last week for their withdrawal. Finance Minister Tendai Biti said the government will provide 142 million dollars in aid to small-scale farmers as the country struggles to revive its shattered agricultural sector.
Links: Zimbabwe, Diamonds, Agriculture

A US plant scientists said late blight, which caused the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s and 1850s, is killing potato and tomato plants in home gardens from Maine to Ohio and threatening commercial and organic farms.
Links: USA, Food, Botany, Agriculture

2009 Jul 10

Britain’s the last ever Royal Show closed in Warwickshire. The agricultural jamboree, intended to spread innovation among farmers, ended a 170 year run.
Links: Britain, Agriculture

2009 Aug 15

Canada said it will pay some farmers to stop raising hogs and offer loans to help others restructure, assistance that drew praise from Canadian hog farmers and concerns from a top US farmer group.
Links: Canada, Agriculture

2009 Aug 28

It was reported that dozens of impoverished Indian farmers in southern Andhra Pradesh state have killed themselves in recent weeks due to debt and poor rainfall.
Links: India, Suicide, Agriculture

2009 Aug 31

Deere & Co., the world's largest agricultural-equipment maker, said its board of directors has approved a plan to establish a new manufacturing and parts center in Russia.
Links: Russia, USA, Agriculture

Dr. Norman Borlaug (b.1914), Nobel Prize winner (1970), died at his Dallas home. He was known as the father of the “green revolution” for his work in high-yield crop varieties, which helped to more than double food production between 1960 and 1990.
Links: USA, Food, Agriculture, Hero

2009 Sep 18

Angry French farmers dumped millions of liters of fresh milk next to next the famed Mont Saint-Michel, one of France's most famous tourist sites, to denounce the slumping cost of milk and an EU plan to end production quotas, which could further drive prices down.
Links: France, Agriculture

2009 Sep 30

Bangladesh awarded a farmer who killed more than 83,000 rats and launched a monthlong campaign nationwide to kill millions more, to protect crops and reduce the need for food imports.
Links: Bahamas, Animal, Agriculture

In Belgium hundreds of dairy farmers drove tractors into Brussels to pressure EU farm ministers on declining milk prices, as 20 of 27 member nations called for more protection from the volatile world market.
Links: Belgium, EU, Agriculture

Chinese state media reported that more than 50,000 people in southern Guangdong province are suffering from water shortages as a spreading drought has left farmers' fields dry and cracked.
Links: China, Drought, Agriculture

2009 Oct 12

Don Young of Des Moines, Iowa, won the 39th Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival with his 1,658-pound pumpkin. It broke the year-old record of 1,528 pounds. His first prize of $9,948 came out to $6 per pound. The world record had just been set on Oct 10 in Ohio by a 1,725-pound Atlantic giant pumpkin.
Links: USA, California, Iowa, Agriculture

2009 Oct 16

French farmers struggling with slumping grain prices blanketed the Champs-Elysees with bales of hay and set them ablaze, and blocked highways around the country as they demanded government help.
Links: France, Agriculture

2009 Oct 19

The EU agreed to give the dairy sector an extra $420 million in special aid in an effort to quell a season of unrest in agriculture. Meanwhile angry farmer pelted riot police with eggs and buckets of milk in Luxembourg.
Links: EU, Luxembourg, Agriculture

More than 17,000 Indian farmers committed suicide, a seven percent rise on the previous year, according to new government figures released in 2011.
Links: India, Suicide, Agriculture

2009

Australian Jeff Lawton created his “Re-greening the Desert” video. In 1996 Lawton was accredited with the Permaculture Community Services Award by the permaculture movement for services in Australia and around the world.
Links: Australia, Environment, Agriculture

2010 Jan 21

New York State police found the body of Dean Pierson (59) in his Copake barn. They said the upstate dairy farmer had shot and killed 51 of his milk cows in his barn before turning the rifle on himself.
Links: USA, New York, Suicide, Agriculture

2010 Jan 27

In Zimbabwe a lawyer said the Supreme Court has ordered the central bank to safeguard millions of dollars' worth of diamonds from a mine where the military is accused of killings and forced labor. State media said a Zimbabwe high court has rejected a southern African court's ruling that blocked the government's move to resettle blacks on more than 70 white-owned farms.
Links: Zimbabwe, Diamonds, Agriculture

2010 Feb 1

Seven American and European scientists were named winners of Israel's prestigious $100,000 Wolf Prize. Its prize in medicine went to Axel Ullrich of Germany for groundbreaking cancer research that has led to development of new drugs. Sir David Baulcombe of Cambridge University was awarded for agriculture research in defending plants against viruses. The physics prize was shared by US professor John F. Clauser, Alain Aspect of France and Anton Zeilinger of Austria for their work in quantum physics. The mathematics prize was shared by two US-based professors: Shing-Tung Yau for geometric analysis, and Dennis Sullivan for contributions to algebraic topology and conformal dynamics. The Wolf Foundation was founded by the late German-born Dr. Ricardo Wolf, an inventor, philanthropist and former Cuban ambassador to Israel.
Links: Austria, Britain, USA, Germany, Israel, Math, Medical, Physics, Agriculture

India halted the release of the world's first genetically modified eggplant, saying further study needed to be done to guarantee consumer safety before it could be cultivated in the country.
Links: India, BioTech, Agriculture, GMO

2010 Apr 1

In Brazil Pedro Alcantara de Souza, who headed a union of landless farmers in Para, was shot in the head five times by two men on motorcycles on the outskirts of Redencao.
Links: Brazil, Murder, Agriculture, Real Estate

2010 Apr 20

South Africa’s biggest agricultural union, Agri SA, said 2 farmers are attacked every day in South Africa and two killed per week.
Links: South Africa, Murder, Agriculture

2010 May 1

In Venezuela armed government officials who took over the 914-acre farm Diego Arria, Venezuela's former ambassador to the United Nations. The government accused Aria of not holding proper legal title. Arria has been a vocal critic of Chavez internationally and is now forming a group to advocate for the rights of people whose lands have been seized by the government. Aria said he bought La Carolina farm, which is flanked by a mountain, in 1988 for the equivalent of about $300,000.
Links: Venezuela, Agriculture, Real Estate

2010 May 16

In Cuba the government said private farmers will purchase supplies directly in future instead of having them allocated by the state, in the latest concession to their demands for more autonomy.
Links: Cuba, Agriculture